- Stanley Kramer's On the Beach plays like a filmed version of T.S. Eliot's famous lines about the world ending "not with a bang but a whimper." Actually, to be more precise, the bang has occurred before the film's start in the form of a worldwide nuclear holocaust that wiped out life seemingly everywhere on Earth except in Australia. Lest anyone get their hopes up, scientists predict that Australia is on the way out, too, once that giant cloud of radioactive dust descends upon the Southern Hemisphere. Perhaps it will take three months, maybe six, but all available evidence suggests that the end of humanity is nigh.
- So, how do people react? American Naval Commander Dwight Towers (Gregory Peck) talks about his wife and kids as though they're still alive. Scientist Julian Osbourne (Fred Astaire) has more or less retreated into a bottle with socialite Moira Davidson (Ava Gardner) not far behind. A young naval lieutenant named Peter Holmes (Anthony Perkins) prepares for the worst by requesting suicide pills, while his wife Mary (Donna Anderson) clings to hope that humanity will find some way to survive. As a last ditch effort, Towers, Osbourne, and Holmes take to the sea in a submarine to evaluate radiation levels and to investigate the source of a mysterious radio message that doesn't resemble Morse code in the slightest.
- Much of the film's brilliance comes from the subtle ways in which the characters slowly come to grips with their fates. At first, life goes on more or less the same, but with less petrol and more alcohol. People like Julian may occasionally commit the faux pas of mentioning the war at a dinner party, but people generally steer away from discussions of the future. For her part, Moira is just happy to have a man like Towers around near the end, even if he is determined to scour the Earth for any remaining signs of life. Meanwhile, each subsequent discovery by the submarine crew makes questions like "Was it our fault or theirs?" or "What about the scientists who built the bombs?" sound increasingly irrelevant. Although On the Beach concludes with a stark shot of a banner proclaiming "There is still time brother," that's hardly the case for the film's characters. Whether it applies to the film's audience is another question entirely.
- Based on the novel by Nevil Shute.
- While the film may spurred humanity to avoid nuclear annihilation, it did help to popularize the song "Waltzing Matilda." You win some, you lose some.
